fever to tell

Olivia Jeffries 


I'm always interested in this aesthetic. I like beautiful things. I like thinking about why things like this are beautiful. I like time. I like delicate things. I like pieces of her artist statement about things that move her: "the complex and unknowable nature of reality, an intimate moment which exists for just a second and is then forgotten or the impossibility of feeling how someone else feels..."

and you still refuse to speak

empty vessels

my secret self: you can't always be friendly, there just isn't time

In short: I don't like all of her pieces but I like thinking about them.

Lilac Wine

My drawings have stagnated... I need distance and time and patience. In the mean time, I've been making the mental switch back to painting.

I think one of the hardest and most important questions I ask myself and agonize over is why anyone should invest their time into looking at one of my pieces. I look to the art world, to communication, to process, and to the internet. I've been really interested in the physicality of paintings: a frame with stretched canvas, a wooden board, a piece of paper, a wall... As I searched through the sculpture and paintings section of MOMA's website, I came across...

Hannah Wilke. I don't quite know how I missed her before this. I have seen several of her works (online, in classes, in real life) but never attached a name and persona to the works as a whole.

 thanks for the photo, MOMA

Ponder-r-rosa 4, White Plains, Yellow Rocks

1973

thanks, HannahWilke.com

from her SOS Starification Series 

1974

I don't always love feminist work but I like her. I like her boldness. I like that she was nearly always topless (including during installations). I like that she made things that were both beautiful and meaningful and she used this beauty as part of the piece. Mostly, I like how much thought is evident in her pieces: I feel like the artist thought through every detail of her pieces far more than we could ever know.

They ain't ready for this one nephew

Heike Weber is a German artist who makes amazing pieces like this:

Mardin Kilim 2007

silicone

680x340 cm

Dorotheum 300

2007

permanent marker on vinyl floor

Utopia

2009

permanent marker on acrylic paint

I like this statement about her work:

" The foundation of her work is the idea of a neutral space whose potential is first realized through the drawing and is what consciously positions Heike Weber within the critically reflected tradition of Minimal Art. Judd's cubes, Andre's metal plates or Morris' serial objects had focused for the first time on the referentiality of art to its neutral environs... The reality of the room is confirmed, classically, stroke for stroke, line by line, only the next minute to be thrown out of sync. The gestural input, the physical working on a picture support that expands in all directions, seems to veer towards a momentum that now on its part appropriates the viewer. It is not the object on view that finds its irreconcilable and multi-angled visibility made manifest, but the ‘specific object' that strikes back. "

Turn yourself around

Back to blogging!

Although I can't say I love everything he makes,  Brenden Monroe's pieces are something I consistently use as a measuring stick for my own work. Our imagery is similar but (I assume) our motivations are distinct. I like his work specifically because it challenges me to recognize when (in my opinion) imagery similar to my own fails and when it succeeds and why... I think it's much easier to do with someone else's work first and then look for those things in your own rather than being able to be completely honest with yourself about your own work.

Pieces I like:
they feel organic and natural but of his own creation. These pieces bring me in and encourage me to think about what this is, what's going on, and why.

Pieces I don't:

have some sort of figure in them. Some of them, like "Morgan and Kat" below just seem too fantastical without any reference to anything outside of the painting. It's cute, not moving. His pieces that use the human figure fail to connect the abstracted imagery with the figure in a concrete way. I also find the figures themselves disquieting. He may be changing the figure to try to make it visually look like it belongs in this world he's created but I fail to recognize how, other than sharing the page, these two things interact.

Morgan and Kat

Awakening

A Spoonful Weighs a Ton

I've been spending an exorbitant amount of time looking lately: at the MoMA, at the Museum of Folk Art, on the street, and on the internet. Soon, I'll share some of those images with you, but for now... here are some artists I've been looking online whose work I'd like to share:

Chelsea Hertford Taylor

(nefertiti, left + joanie, right)

These watercolors are really fantastic: I can't wait to track one down and see it in person! Oftentimes, I find it a lot more difficult to discuss abstract images, and there's really no reason for it, but I'll try. (I'd love to hear some comments about these pieces or about that feeling of hesitation in front of an abstract work, if you have anything to chime in with!) I love the three dimensional quality these works contain. They're very clearly objects and not just swatches of color. The colors really compliment each other: they flow together, work together, and share the canvas.

Mel Kadel

The reoccurrence of this figure throughout her drawings takes the somewhat abstracted imagery and makes it somehow more personal, more of a representative of an unidentified struggle, and tells a story. 

like a monkey with a miniature symbol

Wow.
I should be (and am, slowly) working on this:

but instead have been focusing on this^

 I am so immeasurably excited to begin, so blinded by reluctance to leave what's good, and so wishing for more (time, space, lung capacity). There is so much to be discovered, so much to be written, and so much to be thought.

Tomorrow Tuesday (completely forgot that long weekend = no USPS) I'm shipping out my dearest belongings and praying they reach NYC before I do. I booked my train ticket yesterday to Rochester (yay for visiting friends!) and my ticket that will drop me in the middle of hectic, beautiful, adventure-filled New York City. I'm even budgeting out my stipend with major expenses in an attempt to keep some semblance of control on my impending city-induced money crunch.

-----------------------------------------

In the mean time, I want to share my love of and obsession with Eva Hesse's work. Partially a response to the impersonal nature of Minimalism, Hesse's work is soft, noncube, organic, and beautiful. As soon as I saw her work, I loved it. I felt immediately connected to it, enraptured by it, taken in by it. Then I saw one in person last summer at the MoMA. I just walked around a corner and it was THERE. Staring me in the face. The happiest surprise of the day (though seeing my first Rothko came in at a close second, but that was expected, planned, and this was not). 

(thanks, newsgrist.typepad)

I hope you enjoy her work, too. And please. Go see it in person. Now.

The chills

I love Michele Bosak's new work.

These gouache paintings feel intimate, feminine, and well cared for. They remind me of some books I'm working on about texture. (Yes, books. Books are my solution to my lack of space and money problems thanks to my impending city livin' situation).

Speaking of... 

               I've finally decided on my narrowed-down list of supplies:

               1. This series continued

               2. Books books books 

               3. Watercolor posters: somethings I've been working on for awhile, really detailed line drawings that may or may not become non-traditional prints

               4. The Necessities: a sketchbook to hold all of the my ideas that will undoubtedly involve large, costly materials; pastels, because they fulfill my color mixing needs when I'm away from tried and true paint; and my small-but-nice pencil and pen set that I've accumulated over the years.

it's a lot, but compared to bags and bags of paint, unstretched canvas, paper brushes, lino supplies, and screen printing supplies, I'm totally content. All that stands between now-art-making and then-art-making are four paintings and time. I can't wait!

don't shoot me down

Paintball paintings from facade painter

This machine has some really interesting (and mostly illegal) implications... I want one!

something happens and I'm head over heels

After all of my posts about longing for paint, betraying paint, and dreaming of future paintings.. I made it! and it's everything I hoped and dreamed... I've started small, with my ever-beloved, never-ending series seen here (apologies for the poor photo quality, as you know, my camera situation is sub-par for the moment)

And today I'm sketching out two larger paintings and putting the first color down on one of them. Yes! 

However, I've been thinking.. how am I going to paint in a (basically) dorm room in NYC? Any thoughts, materials, advice, or artists that deal with this problem in interesting ways would be much appreciated! (as are any/all comments)

National Anthem of Nowhere

Michael Kareken

I think these are gorgeous. The unnatural natural landscapes are both confronting and neutral, ordered and disordered. I wish I could see one in person.










I miss painting. It's been a whole season without acrylics or oils. Watercolors don't feel the same to me: it's a whole different process. I miss my superstitions and the physicality of it all. This week in the studio has been fantastic. Non-stop printing, only pausing to let the ink dry, and I'm really happy with the results so far but soon and very soon I'm jumping back into giant, fabulous, messy, squishy PAINT.

little bunny foo foo (so say we all)

Alexa Meade paints people on people.

I went home for Easter and just got back yesterday. I have a week to throw together a poster (and data) for a conference next Wednesday out west and I'm behind in my printing from all of the traveling. Basically, I'm spending 24 hours a day in the studio and in the lab from now till forever. and I'm really, really excited. 

This was my Easter:

I'm also thinking very seriously about opening an Etsy shop. This way, I can have a year to get going, to get some of the kinks worked out, and then an entire summer (or year) to do it full-time before I start my PhD work. I'm not sure if the whole full-time Phd and full-time Etsy baby is a good idea, but this week has reinforced my conviction that I can do both and I can "have it all" (as Liz Lemon would say). If I want to. I'll probably have to start eating ham though.